Where did you learn to pilot a spacecraft? Asshole College? My God, the cadets they’re sending me these days. Alright, listen up. If you sit right there, don’t touch anything and do precisely what I say then we might just get through this alive.

The board game I want to tell you about today is called Space Alert. It’s designed by Vlaada Chvátil, published Czech Games and it’s both a phenomenal bit of game design and like nothing you’ve ever played. Some of you may have read this article before on my blog. You guys can consider this re-publishing a sort of Director’s Cut.
Here’s what she looks like.

That, right there, is your ship.

In Space Alert you and your friends make up the intrepid (doomed) crew of a “Sitting Duck” class exploration vessel. It is piece of engineering comparable with the 1940 Tacoma Narrows bridge. The way these ships work is that they’ll jump into a comedically hostile sector of space, spend ten minutes scanning their surroundings, and then automatically jump you back out again. A game of Space Alert only ever lasts ten real-life minutes as your ship completes this scan, and it’s the job of the players to listen to the ship’s hateful computer – a CD which comes bundled with the game – as it reels off what threats are approaching and from where. With these threats placed on the board, it’s up to you guys to quickly deal with them in an orderly and professional manner. Dealing with them isn’t always so hard, but the professionalism part? Impossible.

Space Alert is a game of panicking, of screaming at your friends, and asking them where they are and what they’re doing because you’re standing at the main laser and slapping the fire button and nothing is happening because there’s nobody in the engine room to feed it power, and you’re swearing and swearing as a terrifyingly efficient alien bomber zips closer and closer and GOD DAMMIT PAUL GET IN THE FUCKING ENGINE ROOM BEFORE I TURN YOUR ANUS INTO A EARRING. I CAN DO THAT. I’VE BEEN TAKING NIGHT CLASSES.

In short: Space Alert’s genius is in combining its madness-inducing ten minute time limit with a demand for player co-ordination the likes of which I’ve never seen in a game (videogame, boardgame or otherwise).

Right, let’s zoom out, away from the table a bit. Take a deep breath.

You can click on that image to see it a bigger. Now, I’m well aware that with all those numbers and squares Space Alert looks a bit like a fruity attempt at re-inventing the calendar, but just stick with me. If the spaceship in the centre is the heart of Space Alert, then those numbered boards are the frazzled, smoking brain.

While a game of Space Alert is played entirely within the ten minutes of the mission, all you’re actually doing in those ten minutes is placing action cards facedown in your character’s twelve available action slots- programming your crewman, so to speak. If you want to start the game by running your crewman over to the left side of the ship and raising shields, you play a card in slot one that’ll move your character left, and a second card in slot two that’ll cause him to slap the Shields button.

It’s only after those ten minutes when the ship has (theoretically) jumped to safety that you reveal everybody’s action cards and work out whether you survived or not, starting with everybody’s first slot, then moving onto everybody’s second slot, and so on, all the while calculating things like damage and the ship’s energy reserves.

Until then, everything is in your head. While everybody’s free to move all the figures and tokens around the board as they like during the 10 minutes of the mission, if you make a mistake (say, forgetting to slide the energy tokens off the board when you fire a laser) then everybody’s going to be placing their action cards off the basis of an incorrect board. All of this makes it of utmost importance that everybody knows what everybody else is doing, so that they can do something else.

Let me give you an example of play, something I learned the importance of within boardgame journalism from RPS’s own Robert Florence.

***

[Jenny, Rob, Matt and Sanda are half way through a mission. So far, they think their actions will destroy or protect them from everything that’s turned up . The stereo in the corner ship’s computer beeps, informing them of a Serious Threat approaching the blue zone (meaning the right side of the ship). As communications officer, Matt flips over the Serious Threat card on the top of the deck, revealing a Major Asteroid. As he reads the statistics off the cards, Captain Sanda turns pale.]

Matt: I’m on the opposite side of the ship! I wouldn’t be at the blue laser until slot 9.

Rob: [Placing a card from his hand] I fire a missile in slot 7!

Jenny: I’m in the blue engine room. I’ll fire the laser. [Starts placing cards] Alright, I go up to blue zone gunnery room in slot 6, and fire the laser in slot 7. Wait. There’s no power in the blue zone. I can’t fire the laser. Somebody get into the blue engine room and draw power from the central reactor.

Rob: Should I fire another missile?

Sanda: SHUT UP, ROB. I can go to blue engineering and have power in the blue zone reactor by slot 8. When did you fire the laser, Jenny?

Jenny: I can’t remember. Uh, slot 7. I’ll delay it to slot 8. Wait, Rob, when did you fire the missile? When will it be hitting the asteroid? We should co-ordinate this.

Rob: The first missile or the second?

Sanda: WHAT? you fired a second missile? That means we only have one left.

Rob: It’ll be fine! Shut up! I hate you!

[The ship’s computer beeps, informing the group that it has detected an Internal Threat. Security Officer Jenny flips the top card of the internal threat deck, revealing that a team of commandos has teleported aboard into the blue engine room. Sanda passes out, Matt screams and Jenny snatches up the captain’s badge token from in front of Sanda.]

Did I not mention that things come at you from inside the ship, too? Oh, they do. As well as your External Threats deck…

…you’ve got Internal Threats, which range from fissues in the hull to saboteurs and overloaded reactors.

Ah, it’s a shit time out there in deep space. You’ve got to love it.

Other things to love about Space Alert include it’s distinctly Eastern European vision of space exploration, which asks the important question of “What if bureaucracy in the future is just as awkward and crap as it is today?” Hence the Sitting Duck being a class of ship where only one person can ride in the elevator at any one time, your shields are never up and the ship’s computer must be nudged three times during a mission to ensure the screensaver advertising your ship’s sponsor doesn’t come on.

This atmosphere is also lovingly conveyed in the “academy” booklet that comes with the game, which is the single best instruction manual I’ve ever read. Sure, Space Alert also comes with an ordinary instruction manual, but the Academy booklet encourages the player who knows the game best to take the role of a chipper instructor who knows he’s sending the other players to their deaths, but laughingly takes them through simulations of increasing complexity anyway.

If I had choose one moment to sell Space Alert to you, it’d be be this. A few weeks back I was playing this game with some friends and ended up as captain. It’s worth pointing out here that you don’t have to play with a captain, and can happily play the game with everybody screaming at one another like the table’s on fire, but you might find that having some kind of authority to defer to helps to smooth play out a bit.

Anyway, I was captain and we were doing alright. Ships had appeared off our bow and (by our calculations) they’d all been blasted apart or performed harmless strafing runs on our shields. Also, a nuclear bomb had been discovered in our reactor, but we’d disarmed that too. With four minutes left on the clock I was lost in a cloud of adrenaline, but it was looking like we’d be emerging from this in one piece.

Then the computer announced a serious threat. We flipped the card, revealing some monstrous alien battleship that got a boost to its shields every time we damaged it, and my eager crew looked up at me for instructions. What did I do? I looked at the board, crunched some numbers in my head and realised… we couldn’t beat it. We were all in the wrong place, and so were our energy reserves. Metaphorically speaking, the game had noticed we were off balance, leapt forward and locked us into a choke hold.

It was such a hopeless moment as to be inspiring. Here was my crew, their lives hanging by a thread, and here was me, too stupid to know what to do and too cowardly to admit it. I stopped breathing, scared that the fact that we wouldn’t be coming home would somehow escape my lips together with all that hot air. I looked across the table at my lieutenant who would, in theory, take over if I resigned. Could he deal with this?

Then I realised that this is what leadership is. What I was experiencing was a shade of what countless leaders have felt throughout history when they realised that they were fucked. When they needed to find a way when there was no way, when they wanted to throw in the towel but that wasn’t an option either. I felt so overwhelmingly privileged that a boardgame was letting me experience this that I decided, in the face of hopelessness, to do my best, and attempted to lock each of the players at my disposal into position, like cogs in a machine. Fire the laser, boost the shields, eject the fuel rod, fire the laser, boost the shields, eject the fuel rod. It was good, but I don’t think it was enough.

Lucky for me, my failure never came to light. After the mission when we were going through our orders we discovered that we’d dicked up the disarming of the nuclear bomb, and it exploded before the nightmare ship ever appeared. Safe! Kind of.

If you’re interested, findyourgamestore.co.uk is ready and waiting to help you find your local board game store, as always. The Space Alert expansion set, New Frontier, is well worth picking up too. On the one hand, it focuses on making the game even harder. On the other hand, it also comes with plenty of new threats and a set of amazing cardboard badges to help you get into the spirit of things.

From left to right- Captain, Lieutenant, Security Officer, Archives guy, some other guy, Chief Engineer and Communications Officer.

You can’t really be doing without those, can you? Of course you can’t. Right, I’m off to get some lunch. Take care, everybody!

If cylons reveal themselves the’re doing it wrong. The best strategy for cylon is to play like human a give no reason for doubt. The paranoia will eat humans away and they start fighting between themselves…

My problem with BSG is how difficult it is to metagame the vanilla version. There’s an optimal way to play, and having fun with your character will probably see you in the brig for the rest of the game.

I’ve been very curious about Space Alert. Sounds a bit like a real-time Robo Rally where you program moves to co-operate, with equal possibilities to mess things up horribly as the guy to the left of you shoves your robot one step to the right, meaning it blissfully continues with its pre-programmed moves, hits a wall two turns early and then happily careens off the board.

And one can’t forget conveyor belts which bring even more variables to game and combined with robots pushing and/or shooting each other, lots of mayhem is going to happen. Yes, Robo Rally is definetly a good game to make your friends hate you.

It actually doesn’t get predictable. Twelve tracks (or however many there are) might not sound like a lot, but since all the computer’s doing is telling you when the threats appear, as opposed to what they are, it doesn’t stick in your head.

The exception to this is the one track on the CD that has a near endless stream of “Communications system down” messages. When that happens and the CD is playing white noise, nobody’s allowed to talk.

In any case, the publishers released some extra tracks on the official site if you do want some variety.

People have also posted alternate sound files on Board Game Geek (I think there’s some with background music and Star Trek SFX/Music) and someone made a Mission Generator for iOS if you have a compatible device.

Okay, I guess I gotta buy this. Wonder if it’s available in Finland… though I guess I could always order it from ye olde Britain. Any good places to look for?

Also, for some reason that “program your character before everyone starts playing” reminds me of Robo Rally which played in quite similar fashion. It was quite fun playing and then noticing someone just bumped you off your planned route straight into endless pit. Or if somebody caused enough damage to you, one of your programmable slots became “locked”, meaning you couldn’t change it. Cue lots of screaming how somebody ruined your brilliant plan.
Edit: damn, ninja’d by Echo.

Unfortunately I’ve had to stop my self from purchasing boardgames due to all of my friends here being console playing, Mac using, shooter fans that shudder at the thought of playing a game with atmosphere let alone on that isn’t completely automated.

Turn on your filter in your profile -keeps such dirty words out of the text.
I want to play some boardgames soon though so will probably have to buy some friends to go with it. Friends are sold in gameshops aren’t they?

Either find a local gaming/hobby club, or convert your non-gaming friends by showing them a good time with board games (or if they resist conversion, use them for the length of a board game). If you truly have no one you consider friends, and believe this is an impediment to gaming then you are looking at it in a rather limited way. Gaming is an exceptional way to meet people. Friendship is not a pre-requisite to most board games (although tolerance is a pre-requisite to many). Talk to strangers! Play board games with that guy who’s always playing chess in the park! START a game or hobby club. Meet people, and play games with them. Then you’ll have friends. Or you still won’t, but you’ll have fun playing games and chatting with people.

Well, what general area are you in? I’m in a good boardgaming group that you’d be welcome to try (I’m sure going to try to get them to try Space Alert), and if you’re not in the area I’m pretty sure there’s _somebody_ hanging around RPS where geography and interests would match.

@Quinns

Space Alert bears a striking resemblance to… yes, that’s it: Solid Gold. Many thanks for bringing this to my attention. I’ve been wanting to mix more co-op games into our rotation (I don’t really like the competitive ones because I’m not fond of losing; but if we all lose together that’s great fun), but a lot of the interesting ones like BSG have that whole traitor thing going on and that doesn’t really hold my interest. So great stuff :)

I… think I’ve read this on *here* before. I’m consistently lazy about following links to other sites… maybe the promise of board-game related thrills led me to make an exception in the past? It’s the only explanation! Loved this piece when I first read it, still keenly interested in this board game.

Galaxy Trucker has a big problem with pacing though. For the first few minutes it’s a flurry of activity and fun as you frantically piece together your space ship – then you slowly watch something happen…maybe. BACK TO SPACESHIP BUILDING YAY…oh now it’s time to do nothing again. It’s a great occasional game since the building is so much fun and watching your ship get torn in half is pretty impressive.

I might have to look into galaxy trucker. It’s a fantastic theme, ineptitude in space. Because you get such lovely explosions while moving through a hydrogen gas cloud.

I’ve also had Space Alert on my “to buy” list for a while, too. This and some other reviews (and my discovery that it’s on a billion different “best games of all time lists”) elevated it above Battlestar Galactica. I’m still debating whether I want this or Arabian Nights in my collection first, though. Currently my first desire is White Moon since it expands a game I own and gives it longevity and my second desire is Illuminati Deluxe edition since, having played Illuminati a while back, I fell in love with the game and the requisite insanity. Every time I read something else about the two games, though, Shadows over Camelot and Battlestar Galactic swap places on my list as “first Co-op game with a traitor to own.” Betrayal at the House on the Hill is the only one I’ve played but it’s loaded with issues and they both sound superior.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeee, always wanted to play this,not least becuase I’d read your blog. Never remember its name as I confuse it with Galaxy Truckers -which BGG now tells me is by the same guy.

Days of Wonder are doing a trial of online play for Memoir ’44 if anyone is interested. It seems to give you an intro and a few games before it asks for more money (the prices seem high to me, but I have never investigated the online side so it might be good value).
Just bought the boardgame myself -I’ll have to use 19th century figures from Risk for the infantry though as I managed to buy it without any… bargain!
Once I got those figures out and see the cannon as well I can see an opportunity for a mod!http://www.daysofwonder.com/memoir44-online/en/start/?inforef=212

Edit: Ok, I signed up -apparently it is a beta. It is a 135MB download and gives you 50 gold. Games cost 2-4 gold each from what I can gather. $8 gets you another 200 gold.
Pro-tip, do not cancel the tutorial as it says you completed successfully and does not let you re-do it… might charge you 2 gold as well, but it is not easily telling me my total gold.

RPS in general costs me a hell of a lot of money. However, Cardboard Children (and ! Cardboard Children) less so – I get the same temptation but it’s a lot easier to resist as I know I’ve got no one to play the damn things with)

Damn you! I bought this based on your phenomenal review, but I haven’t found a crew yet! Everyone of my friends doesn’t think farther than “Monopoly” when they hear “Boardgame”, and Space Alert does take a bit of getting into. Damn, und blast! I actually want to play this, right now, with all the screaming! Quick, clone me a crew, and send them over to the Mainz system, Germany sector!

I love Space Alert dearly and will pick up the expansion sometime but this is a blatent lie Quinn

“A game of Space Alert only ever lasts ten real-life minutes ”

Resolution phase takes longer than the game does and can get a little tedious if not everyone is interested. Space Alert is one of those games that’d really benefit from the iPhone/iPad/PC port treatment – with the computer doing the calculations you could enjoy watching the chaos unfold.

I found this Flash Mission Player in that thread http://www.phipsisoftware.com/SpaceAlert.html , and would like to know if that robot voice is how the threats are announced? If so, my hearing impairment will be a handicap in playing the game. I suppose that other people won’t have the same problem, and will have to put up with me saying “WHAT?” all the time :p

Space Alert is a fantastic game, and is absolutely worth getting – it’s one of a very small set of board games I genuinely get *excited* about playing (I enjoy a lot of board games, but not many make me go “Yes, I definitely want to play that now.”)

Once you’ve played a few times, the expansion is worth your while as well. The achievements, optional layers of complexity (e.g. double-action cards, which are the only way we play the game now), and a bit of game-to-game character progression are all solid additions to the experience.

OK, so each player gets a piece of paper with the game’s 50 or so achievements written on it in a checkbox format. You can tick off one (and only one) for each mission you fly, and they’re awarded for everything from bringing your ship home utterly wrecked, to everyone at the table agreeing you were a great Security Officer, to completing a mission made up only of red threats (the toughest ones).

You play the game for a night, you get four or five new achievements, you put the box away with a gentle sense of achievement and when you next play you get to take your piece of paper out again. It’s a cute little extra.

Either find a local gaming/hobby club, or convert your non-gaming friends by showing them a good time with board games (or if they resist conversion, use them for the length of a board game). If you truly have no one you consider friends, and believe this is an impediment to gaming then you are looking at it in a rather limited way. Gaming is an exceptional way to meet people. Friendship is not a pre-requisite to most board games (although tolerance is a pre-requisite to many). Talk to strangers! Play board games with that guy who’s always playing chess in the park! START a game or hobby club. Meet people, and play games with them. Then you’ll have friends. Or you still won’t, but you’ll have fun playing games and chatting with people.

I’m working on making a Cosmic Encounter module since my friends are going abroad next semester and we all enjoy playing it so much (and in a couple of years, it’ll get us all through grad school with our sanity intact). As long as you make it so that there’s some element of the game you have to own (or pirate separately, I suppose) to be able to understand all of the cards and whatnot, Fantasy Flight seems to be fine with their games being made into Vassal modules for online play. Other companies vary, sometimes not seeming to notice at all and sometimes coming down hard on any module that comes out. But, as you can connect Peer-to-Peer and distribute the module privately, I suppose you could get around your module being yanked off the site even if that probably means the company would think ill of you actions and consider them illegal.

On the other hand, if you built a good module that the company was ok with, you could not only post it to the main site proudly but could play with internet friends through the Vassal servers. Either way, you can handle the discussion part by communicating through ventrillo or skype or x-fire or something. Damn, I want to do that now … I’ve got some interesting ideas for how this game could be Vassalized. Don’t own it though. Oh well.

Quinns has a link at the end which should help you find your Friendly Local Game Shop (FLGS)
If you have the pennies to spare then it is nice to support them. Annnnnd now I notice you don’t have one nearby :)

http://www.boardgameclub.co.uk does free postage on orders over £25 and seems to be my go to place these days as I buy crazy cheap things from them on occaision so want them to stay in business.http://gameslore.com/ starts to do a little discount once you get over £50 which unfortunately you will do as the main game is about £40 and the expansion is £20http://www.iguk.co.uk/ is another I have used and were okay from what I remember.

There is rarely that much of a price difference, but there may be marginal savings to be had in looking around Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to go and buy something.

It’s funny that you posted this when you did…I just spent the entire day playing it with a few of my best open-minded buds.

I bought this game about six months ago and finally convinced these guys to play. It took us about four hours to learn how to play and to go through our first 2 missions, but it’s absolutely worth it.

We played about 7 or 8 games. We lost most of them, but it’s even fun to lose. The last one we played was epic, as we were all knocked unconscious for different reasons 3 turns from the end of the mission. Luckily we had dealt with all the major threats by then and somehow managed to survive. Our ship warped back and I assume we all woke up unharmed!